Bamidbar: Travel

There is a travel log aspect to Torah. Adam and the Eve are expelled from the garden of Eden. Kain is exiled and wanders. The first thing that Abraham is told his travel. Jacob travels hither and Yon and ends up in Egypt.

Travel requires preparation. The victims of the Holocaust had to do a lot of traveling. I wonder if there are lessons in the parsha about how to prepare for such travel. This idea of concentric circles, protecting the innermost.

The census data gives us some insight into the size of the families in the midbar. There were 603,550 menover the age of 20. Ther were 22,273 first born males. Half of the families had first born females, but there were presumably an equal number of men and women. Thus: 603550/22300= 27 children per family. In 1860, 51.2% of the US population was under the age of 20. that would double the number of children per family to 54! Using either number, it would take 4 generations to make a poplulation of 600,00 at that rate. Go figure!